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Story:The End of Eternity/E8
II ...Fallen Angels Arend woke again to an empty room and an empty bed. She has left again, he knew, but she will return. His body felt completely rested. It would not have been surprising to him if he had slept for days. Arend sat straight up, yawned, and opened his eyes slowly. A formless haze of night swirled outside of his window, but it was bright enough that he could tell the sunrise would be upon the world, and soon. Arend shivered. This night felt even colder than the last. He pushed himself out of bed with a sigh and started to dress. It has been days, Arend could tell, because his body creaked with all the age of old hinges and disuse. Have I begun to decay? Night was still in the air when he finished dressing in his grays for the day, and the air was absent of stars, as usual. Arend stepped out into the hallway of his cramped home. Like all dwellings for families in the cities, the Vitalis household was a small apartment of three bedrooms and one bathroom, along with a cramped kitchen to cook and eat basic meal rations. Even this early, the door to his parents' room was ajar and no light leaked outward. They were at work already, even before the sunrise. They have already decayed into dust, and their bodies move like loveless machines. Arend sighed and looked over to Avdotya’s closed door. She will be just like them, someday, if I fail. For no reason at all he found himself opening her door quietly, and inside the small room, he could just barely see Avdotya sleeping beneath her gray sheets. Her blinds were closed, so not even a single ray of dawn shone on her face, but she looked beautiful and at peace even without that. Arend’s joyless expression softened as he looked over his sister’s closed eyes. I lied to her. Before long he began to feel a strange sense of perversion for looking at her while she slept, so Arend closed his sister’s door and sat down in the tiny common space outside of his home’s kitchen. Looking down at his feet, he sighed and let his shoulders droop. Outside of Klaytaza’s presence, he felt weak and unsure of himself. I have killed, and lied, and grown. This was the right path for him, Arend was sure, but that could not wash the blood off his hands. The ideals of righteousness could not make him forget that he was truly killing people. To no longer exist is the best peace I can give man and the world, but… Death is still death. I will be killing her, too… He closed his eyes to seek peace and rest for just a moment… but when he opened them again the night had completely died and Avdotya stood in front of him, fully dressed. Klaytaza was still not near, he could feel. “So you’re leaving now?” Avdotya asked. “You’ve given up on making it to school?” “Oh, are you not relieved?” He yawned. “I’m surprised.” “You don’t know me at all, do you?” Arend looked up to face his sister. She wore the same gray student uniform that she always did, with a formless blouse and matching knee-length skirt. Avdotya stood with her arms crossed and her eyes gazing over the small room in front of her with disdain. “…Perhaps I don’t,” Arend sighed as he stood, “but I don’t see why that matters now, either. I’m leaving.” “What? Leaving? Going where?” “Away from here. Away from home. Away from this city.” I will not decay. “Mother and father will not be pleased.” “They won’t even notice my absence. It won’t matter.” Arend heard a voice within him, disembodied and faceless, advising him to flee. “It would be best if you left this city.” Why couldn’t he remember who that speaker was, even now? “Nothing matters – that’s what you’d like to think, isn’t it?” Arend closed his eyes slowly and began to sigh again. “Don’t speak to me, Avdotya. Not now. Not ever again. Get to school. You’re late, too.” “Your whore isn’t here today, I see. Have you sent her away? Or will she return again later?” “I thought you learned your lesson last time,” Arend growled. He had started to walk towards the door of the house as she spoke, and now he turned back to glare at his sister. “…And I thought you finally understood how I felt about you.” “I understood, alright,” Avdotya said with a tone just as threatening as Arend’s body language. Her voice cracked noticeably, but her mocking expression and diction betrayed no such inner weakness. “I’ve seen firsthand just how heartless you really are. You showed that to me quite clearly, as did your magnificent slut. I’m only coming to see my dear brother off as he goes into the great world beyond. Not like there’s much for you to see, but maybe that emptiness fits you. I know more about you than you know, brother.” He could not help but chuckle as he opened the door to their orthodox apartment. As he passed by the kitchen, he grabbed a large kitchen knife from the counter and quickly tucked it into the back of his belt, beneath his gray jacket. His sister did not notice. “You say that, but you are the only one that believes it." Avdotya followed. “That’s what’s wrong with you. You act so freaking high and mighty when there’s not a damn thing special about you. I know what you’re trying to do, and it won’t work. You’re just running away, but you can’t escape us or this world, as much as you want to. What makes you think any of us can change anything? What does moping and running away from home do?” “You speak of things you cannot fathom with such accuracy,” Arend mused. “But as always you are mistaken. I am not running away – I am going closer. The world beckons to me.” He stepped out from the hallway of the building and entered the nameless city proper. The red moon still fell as ever, and Arend wondered if Avdotya could see it, as well. “So you’d ignore the world around you, just to go elope with your woman and die in the gutter of some place you’ve never seen before? Don’t you have responsibilities? Aren’t you afraid of dying alone out there?” “Is that any different from how I would die here, Avdotya?” The two of them did not speak for a long while as Arend navigated aimlessly through the metropolis. As always, the constant groan of machinery and humans provided a loud ambiance to the city’s underbelly, and with the recent addition of low breezes that swirled about the consistent mist of gray, the city sounded as crumbling and mournful as it looked. “Are you coming with me?” Arend asked once he started to walk towards the outskirts of the city, without bothering to look back at Avdotya. “Of course not. Neither one of us would want that, would we?” As they walked, Avdotya constantly looked over her shoulder and kept near the homeless bordering all of the sidewalk, likely in an effort to stay hidden from any city watchman that would punish the two of them for being truants. “I would like something to remember you by. Besides my unending emotions of disgust and disappointment whenever I think of you, of course,” Avdotya probed. “You’ll excuse me if I do not sympathize with your plight. I don’t have emotions, if you’ll remember we established,” Arend replied. He kept his hands in his pockets and exhaled softly through his nostrils. I remember when you loved me, sister. I do it all for you, and I have ruined it all myself. “I have questions for you, and I was hoping you would be able to leave me with some knowledge. You’re always reading and thinking, so...” “Ask them. I do not have answers; I doubt there are any answers out there, at all, except for the blood within us. That is the only answer that exists, I believe.” “Is that what you’re leaving for?” asked Avdotya, on a whim. “To kill yourself?” Arend’s shoulders stiffened, but he said nothing in response. “I’ve noticed, brother. You’ve looked so sad lately, especially since we came to this city… You never make any friends, no matter where we go. You never go apprentice with father or even to scout out potential jobs. You don’t care about being efficient at all. All you ever do is read and look off into space, and I’ve never seen you as sad as you’ve been these past few days… And then, when you said you… The other day, when we…” “Your questions,” Arend cut in. “Ask me your questions. The philosophical ones.” Avdotya hesitated, but eventually continued. “Er… Okay, if you say so. First off, brother – what created our world? I have my doubts sometimes, and… Could this really be an ideal world? Why is everyone so sad? Why don’t the stars shine for us?” “It was the Collapse,” answered Arend, after a pause. He rightfully assumed that Avdotya knew of such a thing – all students were taught of the Collapse in their early years, as well as mandated on how they should conform to society’s will in order to prevent a second coming of such a catastrophe. “All of it caused by humans. We warred, long ago, and we scarred the earth. We killed everything but ourselves, and even then, we barely survived…” As he spoke, Arend thought of the Creator mentioned by Klaytaza, and of the flowers. They had no color in his mind; they were only a faceless gray. “…This pallid, sickening world is what we must do to survive, and persist. All suffering comes from humanity. Those of us who cannot see this truth are the true sinners.” “Sin… You speak of sin, brother, like you’re above it. Who decides what sin is? You always speak like you are above everything. Do you truly believe you’re superior to everyone – to anyone?” She walked faster now, hasty enough that she could stand shoulder to shoulder with her taller older sibling and look into his clouded eyes. “No,” Arend answered immediately. “You said it yourself. I’m heartless, powerless, and sinful. I can’t bring myself to grow, to become an adult… Sometimes, just believing in what I know to be the truth is difficult. Horrifying, really… but I can’t give up. It is only self-awareness that separates humans from machines. It is my self-awareness that makes me more than just another gear in the factories and the endless ticking machines.” Arend closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I know I’m right. I know what is sin and what isn’t. And I will absolve it all.” “But what is it that makes us so sinful? Is it not acceptable to follow society’s rules and attempt to live? Don’t you want to rebuild this world, and make it as pretty as the pictures in school?” “It is our very existence that sins. Think, Avdotya, think of all the ills we perpetuate, all the distasteful practices humans have participated in since the dawn of time. Every breath we draw from the earth is another stab into its weak spot. Only the eradication of said existence can serve as repentance.” Arend thought, again, of Klaytaza, and the words she herself stated. Avdotya’s brows wrinkled and she scratched at her chin. “Is this world, ah, what’s the word… deterministic, then? Everything we have ever done was wrong, and that is what led us to this sort of world?” “Do our sins exist all at once, or are they chronological, you mean? What does it matter? We are sinning, regardless.” “But… Well, then, what do you propose we do? Could the earth live without us?” “Could the night persist without stars? Would it not be more beautiful, pure?” “You answer my question with more questions, brother!” Avdotya burst. “You’re avoiding my questions! You’re avoiding me! I hate it!” “You hate me regardless of what I say,” Arend sighed. You gave me these answers years ago, and you hate me for them. Why don’t the stars shine for us? “Because you give no answers, in anything you do!” “I told you, I have no answers. No one does. The only truth is inside of us.” “Lies! You have more answers than anyone else I’ve ever spoken to,” Avdotya defended. “No. I have only questions. Here, let me ask you some, Avdotya – what is time?” “What is… time?” Arend could practically hear his sister’s face scrunch up in confusion. “What a silly question. Time is… well, it’s the force behind our clocks. It’s what we govern our lives on. It never stops, or rewinds, or slows. It’s just… there.” “Is it a physical dimension, or a constant? You say it cannot be manipulated, but if it is indeed everlasting, can it have dominion over everything? If it is not a dimension, can it affect space? Could something exist outside of time? Can time be stopped? If an object is within this defiance of dimensions for too long, what happens when it returns to the normal world? Does it lose any parts of itself? What if –” “Brother, I… I don’t know.” Arend halted, and Avdotya walked a few paces ahead before noticing that her brother had paused. Arend looked down at his body as he realized that the questions he was asking, with their intensity rising out of his control, were questions he had not known were in his mind. They weren’t tests for his sister; they were legitimate concerns of his, all questions no one could answer for him. Why can’t I remember his face? “What’s wrong with you?” Instinctively, an insult almost rolled from her tongue in lieu of an actual pronoun to address her sibling, but she held back the jab. Never had she felt so close to her brother before, especially not intellectually, and she was hesitant to shatter such a rare dynamic. “Nothing…” Arend muttered. Shaking his head slightly, he adjusted the collar of his uniform jacket and looked around. The two had walked some distance away from their home into a district that was not very populated; they were close to the edge of the city, and were almost alone in the darkness of the metropolis. All around them, towering buildings of darkness rose and equally dark smoke permeated from each one of them. The city’s constant murmurs had simmered slightly, but could still be heard. “The train station is only a few blocks away,” Avdotya suggested. “That’s where you’re meeting your girlfriend, aren’t you? It’s the only way in or out of the cities.” Arend nodded, not bothering to dispel his sister’s naïve interpretation of his relationship with Klaytaza or even noticing the fact that she didn’t refer to the Key with a slur. “The transcontinental train will take me towards the east.” The red moon fell from the east, and he had a feeling that running away from it would do nothing. If anything, the center of the Thousand Eternal Ritual was likely taking place where the red moon was falling; that meant Arend and Klaytaza had to go there to stop it. “As much as you like to talk, I’ve really learned nothing,” Avdotya bit back. She started to wander around the cleared street, not straying too far from Arend but nowhere near as close as they were during their walk. “I should have known. You’ve been all talk for as long as I can remember. Nothing ever gets accomplished with you.” “Nothing ever will get accomplished, until everything ends. They brainwash us to be efficient, but for what? For whom?” “…Whatever. I really despise you, Arend.” “I revile you as well, Avdotya. You and the world; and existence; and the skies; and myself.” Arend felt his heart breaking. I lie and I tell the truth… No matter what he said, his words felt bitter and rancid on his tongue. “The world doesn’t hate you back, though, foolish brother. It does not feel, as you think it does. It does not hate any of us. It only stands, dilapidated because of idiotic dreamers like you who let it fall to ruin thanks to their own experiments and weak ideologies. I should have realized that years ago.” He looked over to his sister, unsure if he wanted to smile or weep. I want you to hate it all as much as I do, but you will never understand. He wanted to scream, but instead he whispered. “And you’re going to change that? By discarding what I sought to prophesize? By continuing to conform to humanity’s wiles?” “Yes, Arend.” She glared at him, the ends of her mouth turning up and exposing her teeth. “I’m going to do what you could never do, and change things my own way. I’m going to be efficient for myself. One day… I want you to come back here, or wherever I am, and I want you to see what I could do with the world. I want you to see how we can fix things without asking questions about everything all the time. How we can fix things from within, and how we can use our education and our skills to make the world beautiful again. To make the stars shine for us again. I need you to see how I fix things, permanently. And I want you to say to me what you couldn’t before.” Arend flinched. “Anything built with human hands, including humans ourselves, is fated to a finite appearance. They will fade. There is no permanence besides destruction.” “Nothing will fade if we hold onto it!” Avdotya screamed suddenly. She ran a hand through her dark flaxen hair and her green eyes began to shimmer with moisture, but again she did not let them hinder her passion. “Arend… I cannot hold onto you. That’s what I realized when you told me you never loved me. So, please, answer one last question for me… What is it that you want to do? What is it you’re chasing?” “The end.” Avdotya’s face hardened. “So genocide is your answer? That’s what you mean by destruction, isn’t it? We’re all fucked up, so you’ll just kill us all?” Arend turned his head away. “How is that any better than living in a colorless world of gray? If life is as pointless as you say, then it’s up to us to give it purpose! Erasing everything isn’t solving things, it’s running away from them! I wish you’d just listen to me for once!” She knew he had already made up his mind. Nothing she said to him anymore would change anything. Arend began to slowly walk away from Avdotya Vitalis. “You’ll never see me again. I want to see how the world ends, even if I have to cause it myself. I need to. The stars will not shine, not anymore. Not ever again, for as long as we live. To exist is our sin, and we only exist in this reality… So I will destroy this reality.” Avdotya was silent. In the midst of her unleashed emotional pain and her brother’s calloused words, she lost all inhibition and began to cry. “Don’t leave me, brother… Please, don’t do this. I don’t know when I’ll see you again… Don’t leave me…” As she fell to her knees, the rest of her body limp, she heard only the constant murmur of the city’s ambiance and the last words from her brother that she would ever hear. “Please… I just want you to be proud of me. I just want you to love me… To love yourself…” Arend walked off to the east, and the moon continued to fall, and he did not weep. His heart was soft and quiet; he suspected it had already broken. He whispered one last phrase to his sister as she stood in the middle of the soot-covered street, sobbing, but he did not even know if she heard him at all. “It will all return to nothing.” After that he walked quietly and kept his eyes forward. He thought of the flowers and the mysterious speaker in his memory, and of Klaytaza. He thought of summoning her mentally again, but decided against it. She would turn up when she felt the time was right; for now, anyway, Arend wished to be alone. Before long he arrived at the deserted intercontinental train station. Not only was the station empty, the immediate vicinity around it was coated with soot and fallen exhaust, unbroken by footprints. No one had entered or left the city for days. Arend stood in the open courtyard near the rusted entrance doors for a long moment, just breathing. On a whim he looked up to the crimson moon and traced its scarred surface with his eyes. Beautiful, he thought. Like her. Footsteps started to shuffle around dirt and machine remains. Arend turned to the person approaching him, and let a single hand fall from his pocket. Klaytaza? No. Natalia Monomus walked out of the lonely gray streets towards him. It only took an instant for Arend’s expression to change from surprise to perplexed mistrust. “What are you doing here?” Natalia’s eyes creased as she smiled, and they darted downward from Arend’s harsh gaze. A dark colored shawl wrapped around her petite shoulders. “I wanted to see you before you left. I didn’t know if I ever would, again…” Arend looked at her for another second before turning and raising his chin into the air. “How did you know I was going to…” “I know you have that girl you always hang around, so you probably have enough company, but… I just needed to see you again. I’m sorry…” “…Don’t apologize,” he spat. All the discussion he had earlier with Avdotya was part of the past, he told himself, and now Arend felt wasted and irritated as he looked over his childish admirer. “Just tell me what you’re doing here already.” He had left early, and by this time of day, school hadn’t yet ended – meaning there really was no reason for Natalia to be standing in front of him. The girl smiled sheepishly. “When I caught word that you were skipping town, I just… I needed to ask you something. Please, just answer my few questions… That’s all I ask. I’ll be out of your way soon, I promise.” She crossed her arms and blushed. Her feet tapped softly at the cracked gray asphalt below. Arend exhaled through his nostrils as he gave a glance around the deserted lot in front of the train station. Where is Klaytaza? Once this small discussion was over, he would arrange for tickets for the both of them to leave on the next train, but it would be leaving quickly, and it would not do to leave her behind. Without her, he was doomed. Natalia took Arend’s silence as acceptance and continued. “How has the pen served you? Did you get it to write?” Arend froze and looked back at her with widening eyes. Does she know? Impossible. There was no way she could have known what the pen truly was. Arend swallowed a lump in his throat and nodded. Klaytaza, where are you? Natalia did not notice any of his anxiety, and she simply smiled with pride. “Amazing… I knew you, of all people, could do it. You can do anything!” She looked up to him from beneath her eyebrows and took a shy step forward. “Oh, um… Some of my friends said they’ve seen you around the city once or twice, and that you always walked with a girl next to you… I kinda wanted to know, um… Is she, well… Your girlfriend?” “No… It’s not like that,” Arend coughed, blushing. He hid his face with his hand in surprise – why was he blushing at the concept of dating Klaytaza? “Not at all. It’s… complicated.” Suddenly Natalia was close to Arend, closer than he would have liked. “I’m glad! Only because… Well, I…” The girl’s face bloomed with color as she returned a tentative step backwards. She is wasting my time. “Do you have any other questions for me?” Natalia cleared her throat and began to play with her hair. “I wanted to know if you’ve ever loved anyone before.” Arend’s heart began to thunder within his chest once more. “Of course not,” Arend would have said, once. “Every human being disgusts me. I find no beauty in the human form; I found no solidarity in anyone’s minds or words.” That was really what he thought for years, but now… Love, he thought to himself. What is love to me? He imagined the flowers, sheltered by the shadows of decaying infrastructure and favored by a beam of dim sunlight. He remembered Avdotya, sweet weeping Avdotya, asking if he loved her. He did love her, Arend thought, but perhaps that was all in the past. Perhaps all that died when they saw their first funeral together. I’ve been lying to them all. He began to tear up. Klaytaza reached into his memories from behind, caressing him and them both, and he realized that she was never that far from him. She had saved his life more than a handful of times, and had pledged to do so until the end of time. Devotion: was that love? Could an emotionless prototype for humanity created only for destruction and birth love anyone, let alone him? Humanity loved to live, and in doing so they sinned. Love is a sin, then – and if I am the worst sinner, do I love the most? As always, he only had questions, so many questions, and answers for none of them. “Hello? Arend, are you okay?” Natalia shook his shoulder and Arend came back to his senses. She was even closer than before, now mere inches away from his face. The two looked in each other’s eyes as both their faces heated up. She is pretty, he realized, with butterflies in his chest. He found her physically attractive, but with a detached realization, in the same way one would note that the sun was setting. There was no real attachment in his mind to this realization. She means nothing. Wrapping his hands around Natalia’s round face, he pulled her closely and kissed her. This means nothing, too, he thought to himself. The girl’s eyes bulged at him in surprise for a moment as their lips locked before she closed her eyes and melted into his arms. The kiss was rough and it was not very long, but it lasted long enough for Natalia to rub her hands on Arend’s chest. Her face, which Arend observed the entire time with open eyes, melted into a look of pure bliss and pleasure. It ended when Arend remembered that he needed to breathe. Pulling away from her pink lips, he kept his eyes on her as she sighed desperately and grabbed onto his shirt. He stepped between her legs, parting them, and spoke as her eyes flitted open in bliss. “The answer is no. I have never loved anyone before.” The girl’s face lost its vizard of happiness and the breaking of her heart was clearly written on her face. She tried to speak but could only stutter. Whispering gibberish, she reached down and tried to grasp Arend’s hands, but he removed them and let them slide into his pockets while looking down at her with disdain. Nothing matters anymore. “I reject you and all that you uphold. Your feelings… mean nothing to me. In all the world, feelings mean nothing. Love is nothing. Emotion is worthless.” Natalia balled her hands up into fists as tears welled up in her eyes. “This is why you’re always alone, you know?” “…What?” Arend had turned away to leave, but now he stopped and looked back at the girl shrinking beneath her the shawl. “That’s why you’re so alone. That rejection of emotion… You won’t have me, or anyone else, will you?” Her question went unanswered. “You won’t get close to anyone because you can’t think of anyone as a real person. Everyone is beneath you… And you say that you’re beneath everyone else, but when have you ever acted like that? When have you let anyone love you?” She sniffed and started to suck on her finger. In her eyes, Arend could see the crimson moon reflected and slowly growing larger. “I don’t know what I’m saying… or what I’m feeling… But I know that if you go now, you will die. Don’t ask me how I know, but I do… So please, I’m begging you. Stay with me… Love me! Let me love you!” Arend sighed. “No one has learned yet that to love me is to love failure and sin. I am meaningless… And we all are twisted. Selfish. Slaves to a world of scars and dust. How much do you know about me? How much does anyone know about me? You can’t help me. You can’t do anything to give me power, or to stop my enemies, or to fix this world.” He thought of the flowers, all gray in the sunlight. “I reject it. I reject you, and everyone else, and your love. I do it for her, and hers is the only love I need. She alone can make my dream come true.” He wondered, again, where Klaytaza was. “I see… I guess there’s no reason for me to hesitate anymore, then,” Natalia sighed. Her bloodshot eyes bowled over with tears as she shrugged off her shawl. “You shouldn’t have started things so early. You push me away because of your situation and the way the world is; but if we were in a utopia, a perfect world created anew… then would you love me?” Arend paused and his body instantly tensed up. In the brief moment before he turned around and looked back at Natalia, he felt every drop of sweat falling on his skin, heard every beat his rapid heart made within his chest, and wished he could stop time once more… but Klaytaza was still nowhere to be found, and he did not have the power when alone. He turned and looked at Natalia, who now spoke with a completely new voice and boasted an expression of uncharacteristic intelligence. He was going to ask what she said, but could not find the breath to do so once he saw her once again. Behind Natalia Monomus was a Key to Eternity. <- Back | Next ->